10.3.2 The global TODO list

The global TODO list contains all unfinished TODO items formatted and
collected into a single place.

C-c a t (org-todo-list)

Show the global TODO list. This collects the TODO items from all agenda
files (see Agenda views) into a single buffer. By default, this lists
items with a state the is not a DONE state. The buffer is in
agenda-mode, so there are commands to examine and manipulate the TODO
entries directly from that buffer (see Agenda commands).

C-c a T (org-todo-list)

Like the above, but allows selection of a specific TODO keyword. You can
also do this by specifying a prefix argument to C-c a t. You are
prompted for a keyword, and you may also specify several keywords by
separating them with ‘|’ as the boolean OR operator. With a numeric
prefix, the Nth keyword in org-todo-keywords is selected.
The r key in the agenda buffer regenerates it, and you can give
a prefix argument to this command to change the selected TODO keyword,
for example 3 r. If you often need a search for a specific
keyword, define a custom command for it (see Agenda dispatcher).
Matching specific TODO keywords can also be done as part of a tags
search (see Tag searches).

Remote editing of TODO items means that you can change the state of a
TODO entry with a single key press. The commands available in the
TODO list are described in Agenda commands.

Normally the global TODO list simply shows all headlines with TODO
keywords. This list can become very long. There are two ways to keep
it more compact:

Some people view a TODO item that has been scheduled for execution or
have a deadline (see Timestamps) as no longer open.
Configure the variables org-agenda-todo-ignore-scheduled,
org-agenda-todo-ignore-deadlines,
org-agenda-todo-ignore-timestamp and/or
org-agenda-todo-ignore-with-date to exclude such items from the global
TODO list.

TODO items may have sublevels to break up the task into subtasks. In
such cases it may be enough to list only the highest level TODO headline
and omit the sublevels from the global list. Configure the variable
org-agenda-todo-list-sublevels to get this behavior.